Cisco’s technology was also used in a demonstration of the technology at the Cable Show by Comcast chairman and CEO Brian Roberts. He downloaded an entire season of 30 Rock — 23 full episodes — in about a minute and a half,” noted Murali Nemani at Cisco. “And he did it on camera, over a real-world production network, the first ever with 1-Gbps broadband download speeds.

Prioritize “Big Pipe” Capacity: Plan and incentivize very high bandwidth Broadband deployment through clustering and co-locating very large capacity users, and providing economic incentives to providers to serve these areas.

Attract R&D: Work with institutional partners, including OHSU, PSU, PDC, the State and others to attract at least one major research and development facility whose work requires very high capacity broadband infrastructure and globally-based research.

Standards and Best Practices: Partner with Education, Industry and Research Organizations to encourage involvement in standards development, open architecture and the evolution of work and markets

Eliminate broadband capacity, equity, access and affordability gaps so Portland achieves near universal adoption of broadband services for all residents, small businesses and community based organizations.

Basically, Portland wants to drive fiber to the neighborhood, especially to hospitals, fire stations, schools, libraries, and community centers. Entrepreneurs can take it from there.

Once the strategic plan is adopted, a work plan for 2012-2013 will be developed through the City’s budget process. It is this first work plan which will launch the activities that stem from the goals and key strategies.

South Korea has launched a nationwide broadband upgrade to rid themselves of 100Mbps service for $38 a month. By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second and slash the monthly price to just $27 a month.

“Free” municipal WiFi, subsidized by advertising, was envisioned but never delivered on its promise. Municipal Wi-Fi infrastructure cost too much — almost $100K per sq mile. It required 30-40 nodes per mile, lots of backhaul and maintenance. Designed on the edge of operability, these networks became unreliable as WiFi’s own popularity increased the noise floor. Free WiFi also began spreading to neighborhood coffee shops, restaurants and pubs, where it was a better match for WiFi’s limited range. That also reduced demand for a municipal service.

Today, 4G networks are available in most urban centers — but they cost $40-$80 a month. If broadband wireless were half that cost — even free with advertising — the impact on newspapers, magazines, education, transportation, software developers and the general economy could be huge.

If longer-range “White Space” access points can indeed cut costs by a factor of ten AND deliver reliable broadband everywhere, then community broadband may have another shot.